The Cedar Hills Green Co-op

My wife and I live in a suburb of Portland, Oregon called Cedar Hills. The Homeowner's Association of Cedar Hills [CHHOA] has about 2100 homes and is one of the oldest associations in the United States.  Our home is only seven minutes by car from downtown Portland, and a few minutes from the post office, library, groceries, public transport, and pretty much everything else we need in our daily lives. We like being part of this community. 

One of the things that has disturbed us since we relocated to this area on the west side of metro Portland is the dearth of song birds.  We just don't see them. This is a beautiful area with lots of trees and ground cover, abundant water supplies, and by all appearances everything birds would need to thrive.  So, why are they not here?

We do see crows fairly often. They like to roost in the big oak tree across the street. Crows are an opportunistic species that do well in many situations. They also can account for some of the absence of other species of birds, as they are territorial and can be aggressive in pushing out competitors.

The lack of song birds in our neighborhood is hardly just a problem of 'mobbing' by crows. Domestic cats are also part of the problem.  There are 85 million house cats in America. Cats alone are accountable for the loss of up to six billion small birds annually. Cats are predators. If they are outside roaming, they are looking for prey. Hunting is what they are hard-wired to do. The only answer to this problem is to keep them inside, or perhaps put a bell on a collar that might provide some warning to a small bird before kitty can pounce.

The biggest reason for the lack of birds may be the choices we make in landscaping our residential properties.  A well groomed lawn might offer a modicum of 'curb appeal', but it's not a place that is friendly to nature or birds.  Removing trees and natural groundcover in favor of nicely manicured grass is a problem, more than anything else, because keeping lawn  and gardens 'beautiful' 'requires regular applications of chemical fertilizers, weed killers, and other kinds of biocides.  At least, that's what most people assume.

It's no wonder our suburbs have gotten so far out of balance with nature. The green, weed-free lawn monoculture is hammered into us as the esthetic ideal.  Suburbs are supposed to look like a TV lawn care commercial. That vision of being a good neighbor is constantly sold to us. That's what the multi-billion dollar lawn care industry wants us to embrace. That's what maximizes profits for them.

Allowing one's property to become a bit unkempt and wild is frowned on,  even thought of as diminishing property values.

I, like most people, do not advocate turning residential suburbs into an eyesore of weeds, invasives, and non-indigenous vegetation.  We're talking about making our personal home space more friendly to the plants and animals that would be present if we were not here, not eliminating landscape maintenance altogether.

Probably with much less of a time commitment, and also at less cost than it takes to do the lawn care we are accustomed to,  we could landscape our personal outdoor space in ways that are both esthetically pleasing and friendly to the natural world.   Every well-considered argument I can visualize leads directly to a cooperative, 'green' approach to community.

I've been thinking about how to make our personal existence more in harmony with nature for some time. We have taken some steps already with our landscaping.  We have no lawn, and we allow our plantscape to look a bit busy... not unkempt, but probably too close to unkempt for some.  We also try to avoid or very much limit any use of  pesticides and herbicides. That's not to say we are a good example. We have not been attentive to what we plant. We need to do much better.  Native species and flora that are attractive and nurturing to small birds and insect pollinators  should get planting priority. Anyway,  I'm not suggesting us as an inspiring example. My wife and I need to change our yard space so that the plantings are good for the birds and bees.

About a year ago, I started asking questions and expressing myself publicly about what I now refer to as a green co-op.  At the beginning, it was just an expression of concern for birds and pollinators in the Cedar Hills area.  Then, as I asked questions and talked to local people with lots of knowledge and life-affirming experience,  a compelling picture emerged.  I was seeing my home area, Cedar Hills, as an inspiring example of what a human cooperative for nature looks like. I was seeing Cedar Hills as a reflection of a place whose primary mantra about nature is; first, do no harm.

Portland, Oregon is well ahead of most urban regions in the way nature and the environment are considered.  The Portland Metro Counsel and it's commissioners oversee a 'nature in neighborhoods' program.  They support nature-friendly community initiatives all across the region.  In fact, Kathryn Harrington, the metro commissioner for the Cedar Hills area, is already backyard certified.   

Another thing I learned is there are already many families in Cedar Hills that are living on personal landscapes purposefully shaped to encourage birds and pollinators.   What an amazing foundation to build on.

So, I wrote down a brief concept paper that makes the case for a Cedar Hills Green Co-op.  I took it to Jodie Phelps,  the office manager at CHHOA. Jodie is a real asset to our community. 

On September 9th,  I asked the citizen Board of Directors of the Cedar Hills HOA for their support in launching a Cedar Hills Green Co-op,  run by volunteer citizens of our community. The board endorsed our effort, and they will consider formal oversight of the Green Co-op after the level of community support can be determined

So, that's where we are.  Around mid-October, an announcement for the green co-op will be included in the semi-annual mailing to HOA members. The announcement urges residents to join the green co-op, and makes a special request that residents who have already embraced a green lifestyle become the core of this community initiative. 

Stay tuned. We should know if the Cedar Hills Green Co-op is going to fly well before the Xmas holidays.

The website for the CHHOA is  www.cedarhillshoa.org/

Wildlife Botanical Gardens

Just yesterday, my wife and I drive up to the Wildlife Botanical Gardens in Brush Prairie, Washington. It's about a 40 minute drive from our house on the west side of Portland.

Anyway, it's this beautiful rural acreage that has been lovingly nurtured over the years into a gorgeous natural tapestry of blended colors and textures.  There are plenty of birds and bees around; much more than we see around our home. But, even in this place out in the country, there aren't as many birds around as one might have expected,  though it's still very nice.  On a Saturday afternoon in the summer, we were the only visitors. Aside from a couple of friendly volunteer gardeners, we had the place to ourselves.

Here are a couple of my photos from the Wildlife Botanical Gardens...

My favorite is the one that is dominated by white flowers that are dappled with sunlight peaking through the trees.

The image of the hummingbird hovering over the bubbling bird bath  was hard to get. Only one out of about eight exposures that I shot had the bird even partially in focus.  This little bird was an acrobat, darting back and forth, up and down for a quick sip of water.

Here is a link to the webpage of The Wildlife Botanical Garden.    http://www.naturescaping.org/

Hope on Earth

Hope on Earth, is a highly engaging dialogue between two  remarkable human beings,  Stanford Professor Paul Ehrlich, President of Stanford’s Center for Conservation Biology,  and global ecologist/author/anthropologist/filmmaker Michael Tobias.   Ehrlich is best known for The Population Bomb, a book co-written with his wife Anne more than four decades ago.  I should mention that I was a young man when I read the Ehrlich’s book back when it first came out.  Chilling as its message was, then and now, that book had a profound impact on my understanding of the world.  Dr. Tobias’ work is also well known to me. He is the author of more than fifty books, including World War III – Population and the Biosphere at the End of the Millennium and, with his colleague, partner, and wife, Jane Gray Morrison,  Sanctuary – Global Oasis of Innocence. Tobias has also had a distinguished career as a film maker – more than 150 productions - on subjects (mostly non-fiction, but some fiction) related to animal rights’, biodiversity, and humanity’s tenuous relationship with the environment.  Tobias is also the long-time President of The Dancing Star Foundation, a global animal protection, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education non-profit.

 

 

 

Both men have spent much of  their lives investigating and reporting on the massively expanded pressure on our biosphere caused by human population growth.  To put this in perspective, the number of people on Earth when The Population Bomb was first published in 1968 was 3.5 billion. In all of human history, it took till then to get to 3.5 billion. In the 46 years since that time, the population has more than doubled to 7.25 billion. This massive human expansion is not sustainable. The Earth’s resources are finite. We humans are pushing our freshwater, our farmland, our forests, our marine resources rapidly  to exhaustion. Our dependence on fossil fuels like oil and coal is pumping billions of tons of pollutants into the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a planetary warming that puts the very livability of our tiny dot in the galaxy at great risk. Human exploitation is pushing unprecedented numbers of plant and animal species to the point of extinction.  In fact, the consensus seems to be, for humanity to live within the planet’s long term ability to provide sustenance for most sentient beings, including Homo Sapiens,  the human population should no more than about one to two billion.  The current condition for humanity is one of extreme overreach.  Can we turn it around? Can we change our ways sufficiently to roll back  human demand so it does not exceed the planet’s ability to provide?   

Ehrlich and Tobias are skeptical. Despite that, they remain hopeful. They have both  been aggressively sounding a warning for decades. They both clearly detest the general state of public indifference, and even hostility in some cases,  despite the powerful warning signals we are getting from nature; signals like the melting of our glaciers and the collapse of the polar icecaps, the increasing incidents of extreme draught, wildfire, floods, and massive and highly destructive weather events like Hurricane Sandy and Super Typhoon Haiyan. 

In Hope on Earth, Ehrlich warns, “The past is over. We’re here now, and we’d better damn well make our ethical decisions.”  He goes on to say, “If we don’t solve the issues of population growth and consumption, all the rest of these issues won’t stand a chance of being remedied.”

Ehrlich and Tobias agree that humanity must find a path to achieving critical mass in awareness, and beyond that, a thoughtful, ethical approach to the unprecedented global-scale challenges that have emerged. The course we are on is a dead end.

I really enjoyed reading Hope on Earth. In the end, it is a dialogue about ethics. I loved being a fly on the wall, absorbing this great conversation between two exceptional minds, who understand and care deeply about the ugly turn human history has taken. Their prescription: Wake up and embrace a life-affirming cultural paradigm built on a foundation of compassion, and commitment to planetary stewardship. Do it now, before it is too late.

I give five stars to Hope on Earth. Highest recommendation.

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A Hen and her Little Boy Friend

I love this video.  It's a little boy opening his arms to a chicken, and it comes to him and accepts a warm hug.  Pretty amazing, and a beautiful thing to see. How lucky this hen is. Poultry rarely gets anything close to kindness from humans   How many billions of these docile birds are killed and turned into McNuggets and drumsticks every year.  They have been reduced to commodities on a balance sheet, and their lives are an endless, horrific cruelty in the name of cost savings and profit.

H.G. Wells wrote a book called, The Time Machine. In it, a 19th century man created a machine that carried him into a distant future, where he found humans living a seemingly idyllic life. Only later did he learn the dominant species were a grotesque deviation of humanoid called Morlocks, who raised humans to live only long enough to mature, whereupon they were killed and eaten.  At least in that instance, the Morlocks  allowed their human food stock a few years of cruelty-free existence.  Animals raised for human consumption these days get nothing like that. Chickens are jammed in cages from the time they hatch. Their feet become infected from standing on wire mesh all day, every day. Their beaks are cut off to prevent them from pecking each other, thus damaging their commoditized flesh.  It diminishes us as humans to treat other creatures this way.

The boy in this video has been taught to express empathy to his feathered friends, and they in turn have learned to trust him. Yes, it's idealistic, but kindness is always a wonderful thing to witness.

Here is the video of a hen accepting some love from a little boy...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdxo1mZeY68&feature=youtu.be

A Murmuration of Starlings

It's not often that one gets to observe collective consciousness at work. Somehow, the following image found me on Twitter the other day. It's a large school of fish adeptly keeping several sharks isolated and at bay on a reef somewhere in the tropical ocean.  The school's amazing, coordinated ebb and flow around the deadly predators leaves them frozen, confused and unable to respond to their presence.

Karl Robertson) via @WhySharksMatter pic.twitter.com/4NNWKglHmV

 

I forwarded this image to Rupert Sheldrake, the Oxford based biologist, whose research on consciousness and the nature of reality is so fascinating. I got a reply with thanks and a link to a lovely short video that shows the amazing aerial coordinations of a large flock of starlings, little birds that seem to operate as one collective consciousness as they move to and fro like nature's magic.

Here is the link to the Murmuration of Starlings video...  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRhv_tVMifk&feature=youtu.be

Smartest Bird in the World

Crows are the smartest birds, and some of the smartest non-human creatures on the planet.  Recently, a particularly precocious crow was challenged with a puzzle that requires a series of a very precise actions in order to succeed.  I've met more than a few humans who probably couldn't figure this out.

Here's a link to a very smart bird solving an amazing puzzle.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVaITA7eBZE

POV - - Eagle Over The Alps

This is a totally cool video.  A small camera and transmitter were attached to the back of an eagle, which then took off and flew over the French Alps. Remarkable. Exciting...An Eagle's POV. How cool is that.

Here is the video of flying over the Alps from an eagle's point of view...  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3QrhdfLCO8#t=60

Roundup - Most Popular Poison on Earth

You would think Roundup was some kind of party drink. The latest mass market TV commercial for it features a  yard warrior wielding a spray wand of this herbicide like a gunslinger shooting at  bad guys. Instead, the suburabn stud is shooting jets of Roundup poison at dandelions emerging from cracks in his driveway.

On March 30 & 31 of 2013, I wrote two blog entries about the absence of any songbirds in the community where we live just a few miles west of downtown Portland, Oregon.   I raised the issue of toxic herbicides and pesticides being used on lawns and gardens as a cause for the lack of any birds other than crows and blackbirds.

The article below comes from the Common Dreams website.  It provides some very unsettling perspective on the impact of using Roundup, the most widely used herbicide on Earth.  Yes, it kills weeds,  but it is also highly toxic to humans as well as birds and other animal life.  As I mentioned earlier, the TV commercials for Roundup feature a guy spraying this poison around his garden like it's water. 

Why aren't these poisons regulated?  In fact, there are laws that regulate the use, labeling, etc. of these very dangerous chemicals. The problem is the regulatory process has been captured by the chemical industry.  The government people in charge of protecting the public welfare are instead looking out for the interests of Monsanto and other chemical giants.  Thus, there is no effective regulation, and this deadly poison is hocked to the public like a softdrink.

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Study: Monsanto's Roundup Herbicide Linked to Cancer, Autism, Parkinson's

Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, may be "the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment," say authors

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 

The active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup herbicide may be "the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment," being responsible for a litany of health disorders and diseases including Parkinson’s, cancer and autism, according to a new study.



 

  "Negative impact on the body" from glyphosate, the active ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup, "is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," according to a new study. (Photo: astridmn/flickr)



It's "the most popular herbicide on the planet," widely used on crops like corn and soy genetically engineered to be "Roundup Ready," and sprayed on weeds in lawns across the US. But in the peer-reviewed study published last Thursday in the journal Entropy, authors Anthony Samsel, an independent scientist and consultant, and Stephanie Seneff, a senior research scientist at MIT, crush the industry's claims that the herbicide glyphosate is non-toxic and as safe as aspirin.
Looking at the impacts of glyphosate on gut bacteria, Samsel and Seneff found that the herbicide "enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins," and is a “textbook example” of "the disruption of homeostasis by environmental toxins."
The researchers point to a potential long list of disorders that glyphosate, in combination with other environmental toxins, could contribute to, including inflammatory bowel disease, obesity, depression, ADHD, autism, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, multiple sclerosis, cancer, cachexia, infertility, and developmental malformations.
The herbicide's "Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," they write.
The authors conclude:

Given the known toxic effects of glyphosate reviewed here and the plausibility that they are negatively impacting health worldwide, it is imperative for more independent research to take place to validate the ideas presented here, and to take immediate action, if they are verified, to drastically curtail the use of glyphosate in agriculture. Glyphosate is likely to be pervasive in our food supply, and, contrary to being essentially nontoxic, it may in fact be the most biologically disruptive chemical in our environment.

The new findings may add further momentum to concerns from food safety and food sovereignty advocates who have challenged Monsanto's grip on corporate agriculture and its genetically engineered crops.

In a "March Against Monsanto" in cities in the US and beyond, activists plan to gather on May 25 to highlight environmental and health concerns from genetically engineered crops and call out the corporatism that allows "Organic and small farmers [to] suffer losses while Monsanto continues to forge its monopoly over the world’s food supply, including exclusive patenting rights over seeds and genetic makeup.



 

Eagle Cam

Washington, DC is not a place where you might expect to find nesting bald eagles,  but in fact a few miles from the White House a pair of the majestic birds has taken up residence in a tree on the campus of the metropolitan police academy.

 

The National Geographic Society maintains a live webcam that allows anyone on the net to tune in to the eagles nest.  In March 2013, two chicks were born.  The young birds have grown a lot since then. Pretty cool to watch the parents fly in with a fish from the nearby Anacostia River.

 

The link to the live eagle cam is  http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/birds/eagle-cam-live/

What Happened to the Birds - Part Two

I didn't expect to be following up my last entry with another on the same subject, but then, I didn't expect to read something as troubling as what follows  either.

The chemical giants in their infinite wisdom have figured out how to engineer pesticide right into the seed they sell to farmers and landscapers. 

"Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products"

Is it any wonder that songbirds and honey bees  have been decimated? Is monetary profit the only basis for assigning value in our world these days? It sure seems so.



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Not Just the Bees: Bayer's Pesticide May Harm Birds, Too

—By Tom Philpott

Mother Jones Magazine

| Wed Mar. 27, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

 

Geese in a corn field Jimmy Smith/Flickr

 

 

Once again this spring, farmers will begin planting at least 140 million acres—a land mass roughly equal to the combined footprints of California and Washington state—with seeds (mainly corn and soy) treated with a class of pesticides called neonicotinoids. Commercial landscapers and home gardeners will get into the act, too—neonics are common in lawn and garden products. If you're a regular reader of my blog, you know all of that is probably bad news for honeybees and other pollinators, as a growing body of research shows—including three studies released just ahead of last year's planting season.

 

But bees aren't the only iconic springtime creature threatened by the ubiquitous pesticide, whose biggest makers are the European giants Bayer and Syngenta. It turns out that birds are too, according to an alarming analysis co-authored by Pierre Mineau, a retired senior research scientist at Environment Canada (Canada's EPA), published by the American Bird Conservancy. And not just birds themselves, but also the water-borne insect species that serve as a major food source for birds, fish, and amphibians.
 

The article isn't peer-reviewed, but Mineau is a formidable scientist. In February, he published a peer-reviewed paper in PLoS One concluding that pesticides, and not habitat loss, have likely been driving bird-population declines in the United States.

 

That paper didn't delve into specific pesticides. For his American Bird Conservancy paper, Mineau and his co-author, Cynthia Palmer, looked at a range of research on the effects of neonics on birds and water-borne insects, from papers by independent researchers to industry-funded studies used in the EPA's deregulation process and obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

For the most vulnerable bird species, they found, consuming even two corn seeds coated with Bayer's blockbuster neonic clothianidin can have lethal effects.

 

Their conclusion: Neonics are highly mobile and persistent once they're unleashed into ecosystems, and they pose a serious threat to birds and the insects they feed on. The EPA, they continue, has in some cases severely underestimated the danger and in other cases simply ignored it. The underestimation, they argue, mainly stems from the widespread use of two bird species to judge toxicity, mallards and bobwhites. But many other bird species are more vulnerable to neonics than those two, and Mineau's paper concludes the EPA, in its risk assessment used to register a raft of neonic products over the past two decades, "underestimates toxicity by 1.5 to 10 fold if the intent of the exercise is to protect most species, not merely mallards and bobwhites." For the most vulnerable bird species, they found, consuming even two corn seeds coated with Bayer's blockbuster neonic clothianidin can have lethal effects.

The authors point to several instances of EPA scientists raising serious concerns about the ecological impacts of these pesticides, only to see them registered anyway. Back in 2003, when the EPA was first considering registering Bayer's clothianidin, an agency risk assessment concluded that "exposure to treated seed through ingestion might result in chronic risk to birds and mammals, especially mammals where consumption of 1-2 seeds only could push them to an exposure level at which reproductive effects are expected," the authors report. The assessment also described the chemical as persistent and mobile, with "potential to leach to groundwater as well as runoff to surface waters." So what happened to clothianidin? A "plethora of registered uses for clothianidin followed in quick succession," they report. The pesticide is now used on corn, soybeans, cotton, pears, potatoes, tree nuts, mustard greens, and more.

Mineau's paper notes in passing that the EPA also identified potential threats from clothianidin to bees as early as 2003, adding, however, that the pollinator issue is "outside the scope of the current review." I told the sordid tale of clothianidin's march through EPA registration despite its own scientists' bee concerns in this 2010 post.

But the most pernicious effect of neonics on birds may be indirect: By leaching into water and accumulating in streams and ponds, neonics also attack a major component of birds' food supply: insects that hang out in water, what Mineau calls the "bottom of the aquatic food chain." The EPA has severely underestimated the risk to such insects, they charge. For the neonic imidacloprid, they argue, a "scientifically defensible reference level" to gauge when the pesticide causes harm to insects is 0.2 ug/l. "European regulators acknowledge that acute effects are likely at levels exceeding 0.5 ug/l," they write. "In contrast, the EPA’s regulatory and non-regulatory reference levels are set at 35 ug/l."

Based on Mineau's analysis, the American Bird Conservancy is calling for a ban on the practice of using neonics to treat seed, joining a similar plea from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. Meanwhile the EPA has been conducting a "comprehensive re-evaluation of these pesticides," but has taken no action to stop their use, and isn't expected to complete its review until 2018 at the earliest. Mineau told me that he presented his case on neonics and birds to the EPA last week, urging them to "speed things up a bit" on the review. I asked him how his message went over. "I didn't get the answer, that, sure, we'll have it done next year," he said. Instead, he added, the agency stressed it would stick to its current process. And that means heavy neonic exposure for the birds and the bees for at least another half-decade.




 

What Happened to All the Birds?

We moved into our home in Portland, Oregon a few years ago, We love Portland and, by and large, we like our home. It's on a large lot that has fruit trees, and lots of different plant varieties.  There are swatches of decorative grass, but no lawn. We have several bird feeders scattered about. There is a birdbath in the front and a pond with koi in the back.  It's a place we expected to see lots of different kinds of birds. 

Where birds are concerned, life in this place has been a disappointment. We see crows and blackbirds regularly, but only rarely any songbirds or hummingbirds. A squadron of rufus hummers did land in a flowered shrub next to our house one day, but sadly we only saw them that one time.

Why, when we live in an area that should be teeming with the chirping of songbirds, are we seeing virtually none of the little feathered buggers.   When I was a boy, my family lived in about six different states over a twelve year period. We always saw and heard birds, while  I was growing up in  Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Kansas, and Washington state. 

Why are we not seeing any songbirds here in our nieghborhood in beautiful Portland, Oregon?  Some are surely being scared away by the large and very territorial crows and blackbirds that live around here.   Domestic cats likely account for some of the attrition in small bird numbers. A recent study estimated that the 85 million house cats in the U.S. kill as many as a billion or more small birds annually.  Don't get me wrong, I like kitties. But, there's no denying they are hard wired to hunt.  They are predators. They are going to stalk birds if they get the chance.

I'm guessing a big part of the problem with small, wild critters, feathered and otherwise, that try to eek out a living in a suburban residential environment, densely populated with humans, is exposure to toxic chemicals.  I'm talking about the moss killers we put on our roofs and sidewalks.  I'm talking about the pesticides and insecticides, and herbicides people use around their homes.  When I go to the garden center,  its just amazing to see aisle after aisle stocked to the gills with every kind of toxic chemical guaranteed to take the work out of lawn and garden care.  I'm not carping against any use of lawn care products,  but I do think society has gone way overboard with the use of stuff like Round up and Weed be Gone.  

It's a lot easier to spray a little herbicide on a weed than it is to get on hands and knees and dig it out.  The chemicals we use around our homes may be designed to acceptable levels of toxicity for humans, but small birds weighing a few ounces and having high metabolic rates are exceedingly vulnerable to these chemicals. To a substantial degree, the average suburban landscape has been turned into a toxic chemical wasteland. 

We don't use chemicals on our property. We  don't have a lawn.  Our property is many varieties of trees, shrubs, and flowers, and ground cover.  It's a little bit wild. That's the way we like it.  Weeds are a problem. When they appear, we dig them up.  I wish more people did it this way.

It pains me not to see any small birds in our neighborhood.  The reasons for this seem pretty obvious.  To me, it's a reflection of how seriously disconnected we humans are from the natural world.





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Puffin Cam

Puffins are seabirds.  They are also funny looking in a very endearing way.

The Audubon Society has a live webcam that you can go to that allows you to observe wild pufins on the coast of Maine.  Fun!

The link to the Audubon site is ...   http://explore.org/#!/live-cams/player/puffin-loafing-ledge-cam

Raptor Walking

When I was doing post-graduate studies at the University of Washington in Seattle,  I volunteered one day a week at the zoo. I was interested in raptors, a.k.a. predatory birds, like eagles, hawks, falcons, and owls. Mostly,  I helped the keeper clean out habitats. At that time, the enclosures were pretty primitive, mostly concrete and rusted chain link.  The raptors they had at the Woodland Park Zoo were almost all birds that had been brought in injured, and because of their condition they couldn't be released back in the wild.

Quite often, I was asked to take a bird out for a walk.  Mostly, I did this with a peregrine falcon and a prairie falcon.

Me and the Peregrine

I walked the bird around the zoo, talking to visitors sometimes, answering their questions. At that time, their was great concern that raptors were threatened by DDT, a pesticide that, when concentrated in the bird's body would cause the shells of its eggs to be too thin.  The process of incubating the eggs would often result in the eggs being crushed.   DDT is no longer used, and that's good for the birds.  Raptor populations have recovered in places where their is still habitat for them and adequate populations of their natural prey.

Their was one bird at the zoo that intimdated the hell out of me.  It was a golden eagle. This particular bird had a wingspan of about six feet and a set of industrial strength talons. They looked like they could penetrate steel.   The keeper I worked with loved to send me into that bird's enclosure with dinner,  which was mostly a nasty mix of ground up animal bits...kinda of like hamburger with feathers and bones.  Anyway, that golden eagle would focus on me like I was the meal it was really interested in.  I wish I had a photo of that eagle. It had a broken wing and could not be released, but it was in its prime.... a majestic and powerful presence even if it couldn't fly.

The biggest threat to predatory birds, indeed to all birds and animals, is the loss of habitat from human encroachment.   Yet another consequence of human overpopulation. 

Crow and Dog ping pong

Crows are amazing, intelligent creatures.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqLU-o7N7Kw&feature=related

Raven ice fishing

The intelligence reflected in this delightful video is remarkable...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0w9q125TSI&feature=related